Night of the Lepis

Big bunny

Josh Marshall Slays the New Majority Leader

Ethics for Dummies? This is the guy to change the culture of corruption? Mike's friend from "Growing Pains"?

Mr. Muck tells us what Boehner got caught doing, red-handed. Hey Boehner, (pronounced "Boner") is that a bribe in your pocket or are you just happy to be the majority leader du jor.

Boner and Mike were always getting in hijinx, plotting to circumvent the House ethics rules for Newt Gingrich, taking bribes. Alan Thicke was beside himself on every episode.

Hillary Triangulatin'

"One moment really stuck out. Bush said the Patriot Act should be re-authorized. While most Democrats sat with hands firmly in their laps as Republicans jumped to their feet to applaud, Clinton rose a bit more slowly, maybe tentatively, and applauded as well. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) who was seated next to her seemed to take his cue from her and rose to applaud as well."

Shameless Energy Lies about Oil Addiction and Recovery

"The way to quit a substance is to use less of it. Not in a metaphorical sense, or when more benign drugs are invented in the future, but now. You'd think a leader with a history of addiction would know that."

Psych!

Bush had his fingers crossed the entire SOTU speach, so it doesn't count. Suckers:

"One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally."

The bigger story is the fact that so many people still believe anything he says.

Chris "Tweety" Matthews

"I love the way [Bush] leans into the lectern."

Manimals

Fear of the Unknown

Our Body Armor is Doing a Heckuva Job...Nothing to See Here, Move Along

Isn't the timing of this rather coincidental considering Hillary's recent call for body armor and the suggestion that it saved the life of the ABC anchor that was blown up this week? "If Woodruff hadn't been wearing body armor, he likely would have been killed, said Col. Bryan Gamble, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany." TBogg calls it providing cover for not providing cover.

I don't think anyone could have forseen

our nation's need to break its dependence on foreign oil. Good thing we have Bushie to offer meaningless platitudes about this. A heckuva job, Bushie.

Venus After Sunset

fading distant lights...b, b, better start the dance

"Another time it might have been so different
Oh if only we could do it all again
But now it’s just another fading memory
Out of focus, though the outline still remains

Far away, away, fading distant lights
Leaving us all behind, lost in a changing world
And you know that these are the days of our lives
Remember

Like the story that we wish was never ending
We know sometime we must reach the final page
Still we carry on just pretending
That there’ll always be one more day to go

Far away, away, fading distant lights
Leaving us all behind, lost in a changing world
And you know that these are the days of our lives
So remember...

Another chance hello, another goodbye
And so many things we’ll never see again
Days of life that seemed so unimportant
They seem to matter but to count much later on

Far away, away, fading distant lights
Leaving us all behind, lost in a changing world
And you know that these are the days of our lives
Remember"

"holy mother of god you've got to go faster than that to get to the top; a dirty old mountain all covered in snow, she could turn you to stone so YOU BETTER START DOING RIGHT

you're half way up and you're halfway down..."

SOTU: for the masses. Oceania cares about you...

If you absolutely must watch the SOTU address,

make big signs to frame the tv set whilst Bushie is speaking this evening, so that you may photograph these and send them into a contest that Bart of www.bartcop.com is sponsoring. Ya know, like a big dunce cap, or a thought bubbles like in the cartoons. It's fun for the whole family. Oh, and don't be afraid to draw a thick steak for Denny the Meat Puppet or a dead baby appetizer for the freak VP. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My comment on the SOTU over at Talking Points Memo "Cafe"

Check it out, the Cafe is a highly functional peer reviewed message board that makes a great compliment for one of the best websites, Talking Points Memo, for political commentary. Josh Marshall has it set up so that reader defined usefulness is given editorial priority, I think. Anyway, my shit is getting published, so their editors are obviously brilliant:

i won't be watching [the SOTU address] and neither should any self respecting american, because despite the value in the institution and in the constitution which requires this farce, bush would rather choke on a pretzel than go report to congress. i'll be damned if i am empowering him in any way shape or form, and if this is, as billed, more of the "rah rah sis boom bah, we're right and you are all wrong", i'd rather miss it entirely. i fully expect this buffon to continue the charade that he could somehow lead his way out of a phone booth on his own.



peace and good health to all of you, friends, both values that have been retarded during this administration, and no one needs some nitwit to tell them otherwise.

"There is something to be gained by doing the right thing."

digsby writes"

"...she [Di Fi] voted for the war anyway. So did Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Kerry and Reid. The entire leadership of the party. Every one of them went the other way this time. I know that some of you are cynical about these people (and ,well, they are politicans, so don't get all Claud Rains about it) but that means something. Every one of those people were running in one way or another in 2002 and they went the other way. The tide is shifting. There is something to be gained by doing the right thing."

I say:

Every one of these people should be thrown out of office. One right doesn't mend the worst wrong that could ever be. Every senator who voted for the war should resign in disgrace. I would, if I were in anyway responsible for what we see every day. These people should already be hanging their heads in shame, looking for a better way to serve their country than by blindly setting forth to likely do more harm than good. What is a patriot? A politician who has realized that he or she is doing more harm than good, and acts on that realization by finding new work.

Visitor who trips over shoelace shatters Chinese vases

A museum visitor shattered three Qing dynasty Chinese vases when he tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and brought the vases crashing to the floor, officials said Monday.


No word on whether the visitor's name was Clouseau.

Iran

Connecting the dots to see what comes next.

Millions of poor to pay more or have nothing in GOP Medicaid plan

About 60 percent of those losing coverage would be children.

Prescription Drug Plan Problems Ironed Out, Says Medicare

Everyone eligible has died.

Fear, and the tools that use it.

Steve Clemons writes: "... I respect many signers of this letter and proponents of the AMERICA NEEDS TO FEAR ad, but it is wrong-headed, and I think that they need to rethink their position, retool, and issue an ad that gets us back in the game of enlightened diplomacy and smart national security policy making."

Deconstructing

the reconstruction of Iraq.

Al Roker

takes one for the team.

A Criminal Underworld

lurks on the border. Well, under it, anyway.

Could this be what they meant by "Justice Delayed"?

It's been nearly 17 years since the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil along the Alaska coast in one of the country's worst environmental disasters, and a jury's $5 billion judgment against the company is still tied up in the courts.

But Will They Have that New Cars Smell?

"...substitution mass confusion
clouds inside your head
involving all my energies
until you visited
with your eyes of porcelain and of blue
they shock me into sense
you think you're so illustrious
you call yourself intense.... "


rick o says, "
bye bye love"

seriously what about that smell?

A Harbinger of the New Economy

New York, New York.

Bok Globule to Start Your Day

"Leveraging" Wives as a Tactic

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

The White House has scrubbed all photos from the "Tactics" and "Highlights" sections of the military yearbook this year. The one with Bushie and the two seized wives sitting at his feet, one suckling her child, was a little much. And besides, they're irrelevant to the, uh, investigation.

The military has implemented its "Jethro Bodine" spouse detention strategies, after several pilot programs in the United States were extremely successful. Family pets, prized livestock, and treasured heirlooms are also routinely threatened and kidnapped in order to show our enemies that there are no depths to which they can sink where we can't locate them.

All lives are forfeit to Zod.

A Changed Planet...a more orderly flow of information.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. "This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming," he said. "It's about coordination."

Plant a Tree if you don't have anything else to do today

or plant it tomorrow or the next day...make time for it if you must. Get 10 free flowering trees. Git r done.

Hey, rescue the Rainforest while you're at it.

Values at Stake

Sen. Obama (D-IL) said this morning that Democrats need to focus on convincing voters that "their values are at stake" in cases like the Alito hearings rather than relying on procedural gambits like the filibuster. josh marshall asks why it has to be either/or.

I would take it further and ask if the fillibuster isn't a useful method for raising the consciousness of the populace? If the goal is "convincing the voters their values are at stake," shouldn't the Democratic Senatrs act as if this were genuinely true? Go to the nomination with the Senate rules you have not those you fear. Fear dominates our leaders on both sides of the aisle as never before in our history. Stand for our values Senator Obama. Now is the time you have been called to act. The fillibuster is no procedural gimmick, if it forestalls some horrific injustice by the high court for even one day. If this "gimmick" could have changed the outcome of Bush v. Gore, would it have been worth it? If one young woman lives instead of bleeding to death because of the prohibition against abortion, will it have been worth it?

"The dark side of the reality of war"...as a matter of fact, it's all dark

"This is the dark side of the reality of war. ... People don't want to know the Marlboro Man has PTSD."